Kmiec’s Gospel Falls Flat in Foggy Bottom

In this predictable outcome of Douglas Kmiec's relationship with the Obama Administration, we can sympathize with how one comes to hope that the obvious is not real and how one  yields to the vain belief that if given the chance to serve, one can make a difference.  We have been there -- different time, different administration -- but the same spirit of the age, politics and human nature.  Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

From Religion News Service

By Daniel Burke

The State Department has a “rigidly narrow” view of diplomacy that neglects religion’s role in foreign affairs, a prominent Catholic ambassador charged on Sunday as he announced his resignation.

Other foreign policy experts have another name for it: Religion Avoidance Syndrome. And the departure of Douglas Kmiec as ambassador to Malta, they say, is symptomatic of a longstanding God gap in American foreign policy.

Douglas Kmiec - A Man for This Season

For faithful Catholics and those committed to the pro-life movement, the most shocking betrayal many of us experienced in the 2008 presidential campaign was at the hands of Douglas Kmiec. In a column published by Slate in February 2008, Kmiec declared Obama "a natural for the Catholic vote," and demonstrated how ignorant the academically credentialed can be.

A Catholic legal scholar, Kmiec is a Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University. He also served as Dean and Saint Thomas More Professor at The Catholic University of America School of Law in Washington, D.C. Earlier, he served for almost two decades as a Professor of Law and Director of the Center on Law and Government at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he founded the Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. He was also appointed by President Reagan as the Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice.

Yesterday he was appointed by President Obama as US Ambassador to Malta.

In Robert Bolt's great play and movie, A Man for all Seasons, Sir Thomas More is convicted of treason, based on the perjured testimony of Richard Rich. More then notes a new chain-of-office worn by Rich. When told that his accuser has been named Attorney General for Wales, More responds: "It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?"

Or for Malta, Douglas?

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!